


Hitting Bottom

by orchidluv



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4781738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchidluv/pseuds/orchidluv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wesley tries to figure out where to go from here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hitting Bottom

**Author's Note:**

> Set Post-The Price. References to Lilah/Wesley.

The door shut behind her cutting off the rapping of high heels on the hardwood floor, their brisk rhythm demonstrating the owner’s indifference to his words, and silence once again filled his flat. Wesley lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, Lilah’s words lingering behind her, almost as tangibly as the perfume she had left imprinted on his skin and the worn cotton sheets. 

He rather suspected she was right and he was losing his soul. To despair, loneliness, and self-loathing.

Rolling to his feet, he padded naked to the bathroom and stepped into the shower, not bothering to let the water warm up first. Scrubbing Lilah’s scent off himself, he ducked his head under the tap and rubbed vigorously at his hair, wincing slightly as the soap ran down over the not quite healed wound on his neck. Lilah had been fascinated and aroused by the jagged red edges, sucking on them and tracing the gash with her tongue until the stitched-together skin had felt raw.

He shivered at the memory, disgusted by how arousing he had found her actions at the time, and shut off the water, reaching for a towel and briefly considered shaving as he dried himself. Once again, he let it go, still flinching at the idea of a blade near his throat. He wondered if he’d ever be able to shave again. 

Crossing to the mirror, he forced himself to stare at his reflection. The stranger looking back at him with bleak eyes was starting to be familiar, although it was remarkable how long one could go without looking at one’s own reflection, especially when shaving wasn’t on the agenda.

Was this who he was now? A bitter, angry man who used people selfishly and spent his days drinking himself into oblivion? Lilah represented everything he despised and he’d still slept with her, pouring his pent-up anger and self-loathing into her body along with his semen, the momentary relief of orgasm vanishing into new depths of self-hatred, even as he ordered her out of his bed with callous disregard for her feelings.

It had been a month since he took Connor. A month in which he’d learned just how thoroughly his friends had rejected him. It was hard to avoid knowing that there was no way to undo the damage he’d done when every person in the world that he cared about had made sure he knew that they were never going to forgive him. 

He turned away from his image in the mirror, reaching for the robe hanging on the back of the door and pulling it on. Such thoughts only led to the kind of despair that had him drinking enough that sleeping with Lilah Morgan seemed like an acceptable idea.

He sat down on the couch, not wanting to return to the bed that still smelled of sex and Lilah, and wondered what on earth he was going to do now.

Seeing Angel and Connor at the bar last night had crushed the last faint hope that things could ever go back to the way they had been. He’d been clinging to the thought that, if he could find some way to bring Connor back from Quor-Toth, that maybe it would balance the scales and make it possible for his friends to forgive him. That returning Connor would make up for having taken him in the first place. But somehow, miraculously, Connor had already returned from Quor-Toth and nothing had changed. Not one of his former friends had unbent enough even to let him know that Connor had survived and was back.

Bitterly, he wondered if that was because they were afraid he would betray them again or if they just didn’t care anymore. Staring blindly into the darkness, Wesley struggled against the tidal wave of emotion that accompanied that thought. It still cut deep that his friends thought him capable of turning Connor over to Holtz, Angel’s sworn enemy. Despite all the evidence that he’d done nothing of the kind, Fred had hurled that accusation at him in the hospital. What he’d done was bad enough and had led to unmitigated disaster for all of them, especially Connor, but being left to die with blood pouring from his slit throat should have been enough to prove that he wasn’t working with Holtz.

Connor was back and alive and Wesley felt a tiny lessening of the guilt that had been tearing him up inside ever since he’d learned that Connor had been taken to Quor-Toth. He’d still stolen Connor’s childhood from Angel, but at least Connor hadn’t died to pay for Wesley’s sins.

Which left him….nowhere. There was no forgiveness, no chance of ever regaining their trust or their friendship. 

He’d never expected Angel to forgive him, had known from the moment he made the decision to take Connor that there was no going back, and Angel had made that painfully clear in the hospital. The muffling pillow and the roaring in his ears as he’d struggled to breathe under the unrelenting pressure hadn’t been enough to block out the furious words: “You think I forgive you? Never!” 

It wasn’t Connor’s fate Angel had been screaming about as he’d put his full weight behind the smothering pillow, it was the fact that he’d taken Connor. 

“You took my son!”

It was only after he was released from hospital that Wesley had learned that Holtz had taken Connor out of Angel’s reach forever, diving through a tear in reality into the Quor-Toth with Connor in his arms. When he’d learned that, he’d almost wished Angel had been allowed to finish what he’d started in the hospital. The thought of Connor trapped there - a demon dimension so legendary for its terrors that it had been deliberately sealed away from all other dimensions - had haunted him with nightmares ever since, sparking a fevered quest for some way to access it and either find Connor, or put an end to his own miserable existence in trying.

No, he hadn’t dared hope that Angel would ever forgive him. He’d known as he left the hotel with the baby in his arms that he could never return. At the time, his only hope had been to take Connor away until he’d found some way to defeat the prophecy, then return him when it was safe. Even if his original plan had worked out, he’d known he wouldn’t ever be able to go back again after kidnapping Angel’s son.

And after bludgeoning Lorne into unconsciousness in his blind panic at being discovered, he couldn’t expect Lorne to forgive him either. It was the rest of them that had been such a surprise. 

Fred had visited him in the hospital just long enough shred any remnant of hope that any part of his former life could be salvaged from the wreck he had made of it.

“You were trying to protect him. Both of them. I just wanted you to know I understand that.”

Like Angel, dangling the specter of understanding and forgiveness before him, then snatching it away again. 

“He was right to blame you, Wesley. Don't come back to the hotel. Ever.”

Her back had been turned to him as she exiled him from the only real family he’d ever had, her voice filled with anger and grief. Even if he’d been capable of speech at the time, he doubted he would have been able to say anything in the face of such utter rejection. Learning that the others knew the reasons for his actions and that it made no difference. That no allowances were being made for good intentions, his actions judged solely on the disastrous results. 

Gunn, who had practically lived at the hospital after Wesley had been shot, hadn’t come to see him even once during the week he’d been there this time. The one time he’d seen the other man since his release from hospital, Gunn had made it clear that he’d only sought Wesley out because he was desperate for his expertise. 

“I don't have time to get into it with you. I don't even want to be here.”

Loyalty was something Gunn valued above almost anything else. He shouldn’t be so surprised that Gunn would view his actions - even in an attempt to save Connor - as disloyal and something that could never be forgiven. Wesley supposed it was stupidity on his part that he hadn’t thought of himself as betraying anyone but Angel. He’d thought he was protecting the others from the agonizing choice he’d been forced to make. 

It was hard not to remember that Gunn had been forgiven for own divided loyalties, even though Gunn’s choices had nearly gotten them all killed when his friends shot up Caritas. Maybe that was why he’d been so sure that it was Gunn who’d sent the email asking to meet him at the bar last night. He’d told Gunn that they didn’t know the whole story and he’d thought… A bitter, self-mocking smile crossed his lips. He’d thought Gunn was arranging to meet him on neutral territory. Not the Hyperion, where Angel presumably still wanted to kill him, and not Wesley’s flat, after Wesley had told him not to come here again.

But the person waiting for him last night was Lilah, not Gunn. And Wesley had been forced to realize that Gunn wasn’t interested in hearing Wesley’s side of the story. None of them were. Not Gunn. Not Fred. Not Cordelia.

Cordelia’s silence was almost worse than Gunn and Fred’s harsh accusations. She’d been back for weeks now and hadn’t contacted him at all. Even enduring the verbal flaying she was capable of would have been better than this cold, unforgiving silence. A Cordelia who was shredding you with her tongue was someone who still cared enough to let you know you’d disappointed her. 

Would it have made a difference if she’d been here during those critical weeks when he’d been driving himself halfway to insanity trying to disprove the prophecy, falling apart slowly but surely while no-one around him seemed to notice? He dared not let himself think it would have mattered. That kind of second-guessing lead to fruitless speculation on ways to turn back time - something he’d already spent far too much time considering given the inherent danger of those kinds of spells. It wouldn’t have changed things - Cordelia had been wrapped up in Groo, and Fred and Gunn had been totally focused on each other. Angel had had all his attention on Connor, turning his unrequited love for Cordelia towards his son, and Wesley hadn’t felt able to share his desperation and fear with any of them.

He wrenched his thoughts away before they fell again into the well-worn groove of wondering how the prophecy could have been false when the Loa had confirmed it was true. He didn’t see how he could have been so wrong. The portents had arrived, exactly as described by the Loa, and weeks of frantic research hadn’t been able to disprove his translation.

He glanced over at the laptop on the table, the flat shape barely visible in the faint light from the streetlamps outside. Most of his books were still at the hotel and he’d been reduced to searching for answers about how to open a portal to Quor-Toth on the computer. All those hours wasted, yet it had been the only time he’d felt like he had any purpose left in the weeks since he left the hospital. 

That, and tossing the bottle of vodka to Gunn to save Fred’s life. 

With a bitter twist of his lips, Wesley couldn’t help remembering that Gunn hadn’t acknowledged his help since. He’d had to find out for himself if Fred was still alive, watching the Hyperion the next day until he’d seen Fred walk out, her arm around Gunn, her smiling face turned up to his as she spoke. Gunn had pulled her close and they’d kissed for a long moment before walking off down the street. 

He’d drunk most of a bottle of vodka himself afterwards, alone in his apartment, an ironic salute to her survival.

Despite paying for it by vomiting his guts out in the bathroom the next morning, seeing Fred outside the Hyperion, alive and well, had been the only moment that Wesley had felt anything approaching happiness since well before he’d kidnapped Connor. Knowing she was alive because of his training and experience had made him feel useful and necessary, even if only for a fleeting moment. 

If he was going to survive, he needed to find a way to earn money. More importantly, he needed that feeling of being useful. Of helping people. He’d failed as a Watcher and he’d failed with Angel. Those doors were closed to him now, which meant he had to find another way to put his training to use. He’d been a rogue demon hunter once and he suspected he could do it again now, and a great deal more effectively.

But not alone. Angel and the Scoobies had taught him that working with a team was far more efficient than going it alone. Both Angel and Buffy functioned better with a group to back them up. 

Not friends, just a couple of employees. People he could work with without emotional attachment, who couldn’t take their friendship away as easily as flipping a switch if he made a mistake, because there would be no friendship to withdraw. He’d been alone most of his life, it shouldn’t be this hard to get used to it again. He just needed to stop waiting for forgiveness that was never going to come, stop mourning for what he would never have again and rebuild from the ashes. Only this time, he wasn’t that naïve, inexperienced innocent who so desperately needed others to validate his existence. He wasn’t looking for a family, or the warmth of friendship any more. He’d tried that and bollocksed it up beyond repair. 

Not caring was the way to go. Keep people at a distance. Employees, not friends. 

The first faint dawn color was lightening the sky outside and Wesley crossed to the window and stared out at the sprawling city. He’d become familiar with many of Los Angeles’ dark corners. He still had contacts here, people who owed him favors and people who would pass on information for a price. Enough of a foundation to start over on his own. He could fight the good fight, get the job done and keep his people safe, without being emotionally attached. 

And Fred had showed him where to start.

He turned around and looked around his flat, seeing the Murshan Dynasty dagger Angel had brought him from Tibet displayed on the wall, the DVD’s that Gunn had left here the last time they’d had a movie night, the small painting Cordelia had given him insisting he needed something besides weapons on his walls, the photograph of the entire team. He traced his fingers over the smiling faces, remembering Fred’s mother taking the picture the night before she and Roger went back to Texas. Barely six months ago and now he was dead to them. 

With a sigh, he turned the picture face down on the shelf, then went to the closet to get a box. It only took a moment to pack up everything, stripping his flat of the reminders of his friends. The box fit neatly in the back of the closet next to the one Fred had brought to the hospital with his personal items from the office. 

They had erased him from their lives and he would have to do the same. And in doing so, surely the loneliness and guilt that haunted him would eventually disappear.

End.


End file.
